Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
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your support. Welcome to the program. Hope you're doing well.
Thanks a lot for hanging out. And as we always
do at noon on Tuesday, we check with Andrew Dunne.
He is the publisher of long Leaf Politics longleafpol dot com,
and he's also a contributing columnist at The Charlotte Observer. Andrew,
how are you, sir?
Speaker 2: I'm doing well, just trying to stay.
Speaker 3: Warm over here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's kind of brutal, but I mean I think,
like tomorrow it'll be like ninety and then the day
after that it's twelve. So yeah, right, all right, And
just from a quick programming standpoint, I am off next week,
so I release you of your duty to carve out
time for us.
Speaker 2: On do you just ruin my whole Tuesday.
Speaker 1: I somehow doubt that, Andrew. I appreciate that, but I
doubt it. I think you'll be freed up now. You
can enjoy your lunch break without any show prep. So
let's talk a little bit about education. I thought you
had a great line. You got two different pieces here
on the education front, one from a week ago and
then the other from just a couple of days ago.
But you said in the Charlotte Observer, North Carolina is
running a trust deficit with its public schools, and it's
getting worse. But I want to start with the piece
that you have at Long Leave Politics, where you talked
about and I was actually going to ask you about
this last week, but we ran out of time. But
a bedtime chat with your daughter sent you down an
educratic rabbit hole to try to try to answer the
question of why your daughter said, oh, yeah, she knows
about Christopher Columbus. He's a bad guy. He abused the
Native people. This is our answer to when you asked
what she learned in school today about Columbus Day and
you get to a thing, and this is one of
the it's one of my beefs with the public schools system,
and a lot of people who are in it is
that there is this either refusal to admit or there's
just ignorance that schools are where we in America have
for generations transmitted our norms, our shared American identity. This
is the schools. That's where that has occurred, not you know,
only in schools, but that's been the driving force for
this stuff, this handing down of the stories. And stories
are very powerful things. So after your daughter says this,
you start looking into like, what exactly are they teaching?
And did you get any answers?
Speaker 2: No, I don't really have any answers. You know, Unfortunately,
we don't have a whole lot more visibility into what's
actually happening within the schools. Even with the Parents' Bill
of Rights that passed two years ago. I've tried to
get more of a window into what's happening, but haven't
really had a whole lot of success. But yeah, on
the column, you know, I don't want to make a
really big deal about that individual circumstance. You know, whatever
comment that it was by the school librarian, you know,
that's neither here nor there at this point, I guess,
But you know, The bigger point that I'm trying to
make is, you know, when are we as a state
as a nation going to think more seriously or and
talk more seriously about what are we teaching our young
children about historical events, and especially as it pertains to
the founding of the United States. You know, there's a
whole generation of folks who have grown up now in
today's education system that really takes the more Howard Zen
and oppressor versus a press view of history. And I
think I don't see how we as a country can
succeed moving forward if that is what we're you know,
and doctrinating our young people into.
Speaker 1: No, if you teach the kids that everything is inherently
bad about the country in which they live, then it's
not surprising that they want to, uh dare I say,
fundamentally transform it into something else? And this isn't And
we should also point out here, as you do in
the piece, you know, there is a there is a
difference between what you're teaching kids in the younger younger
grades versus the older grades. Right, this is a it's
it needs to be a step process.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. And that's kind of how I was thinking
about it. You know, I was thinking through, all right,
so what what do I want my eight year old
to know about Christopher Columbus? And you know, I'm not
one hundred percent sure. I'm not a Colombian historian. Unfortunately
I probably should be. But I have to say that
the one thing if my eight year old knows one
thing about Columbus, that he's an evil villain is probably
not it. I mean, that's just as simplistic as as saying,
you know, he's a conquering hero who discovered America. You know, both,
you know, are not one hundred percent accurate, but the
villain narrative is just as damaging.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I heard there was a watch an interview and
I had never realized this, but apparently Columbus set sail
off to the quote New World right to try to
go around the other direction because of the because of
the conquering by Islam that had cut off the entire
European area in Spain from all of the existing Christendom
countries that have been that had fallen over centuries, and
so they had to go so they had to find
a different way to avoid the piracy, to avoid Yeah,
and like I'm fifty two years old, I just learned
that like a month ago. I had no idea about
that aspect of the you know, the exploration into the
New World to try to find another route across the country.
But yeah, and all right, so then you mentioned the
Parents' Bill of Rights also, and everybody was talking about
this House Oversight Committee at the state legislature where they
brought in the chairman and the superintendent of Chapel Hill,
Carborough Schools because the chairman of the school board, George Griffin,
had made comments publicly during a board meeting about how
they probably weren't going to adhere to the state law
the Parents' Bill of Rights. And this is the quote
that I read earlier from your piece where that the
state is running a trust deficit with its public schools
and it's getting worse. So you talk about this cycle,
it just kind of reinforces itself where the district acts badly,
people then don't trust it, and then it just keeps
kind of going in this cycle. So how do you
break out of that cycle?
Speaker 2: Gosh, if I had the answer to that, I probably
would have a whole lot of money. But yeah, I
mean it's difficult because this hearing that happened last week
came at the same time that the state Department of
Public Instruction was putting out new numbers on enrollment in
school districts across North Carolina. And you know, there was
a huge dip, a huge decline in enrollment in twenty twenty,
you know, when COVID shut down all the schools. People
were trying to find different options. But in a lot
of our big urban school districts Charlotte's one of them,
Wait Counties one of them, Orange County is one of them,
those numbers are continuing to go down. So it's clear
that there's a large segment of the population that just
doesn't trust the public school system. And so you know,
Democrats will often say, well, you know, if there's problems
with the school system, it's just because you're not paying
teachers enough. You're not putting enough money into it. And
I've had conversations with legislators who are somewhat sympathetic to
that argument. You know, they say, yes, teachers do need
to get paid more, but they're trying to make the
case to their colleagues in the General Assembly to raise
teacher pay. And then it comes out that you know,
teachers are reading some of these, you know Stantsa's husband
books to the classroom, and it just makes people want
to throw up their hands and say, well, I'm not
going to give them more money. And so I honestly
I don't know which side needs to change first. I
mean probably I would have to say it has to
start at the school district level, that we need to
see some more good faith efforts to get back to
fundamentals of education, and then we can pour more money
into the system.
Speaker 1: Well, yesterday I talked about some there was a report
I think it was at the Atlanta and it was
looking at a couple of colleges and how unprepared their
students are, their freshmen or first year, first yearers or
whatever they call them now because you can't say freshmen,
so whatever. Yeah, and so there they had to put
like I think it was something like nine hundred of
their freshmen at UC Davis, nine hundred of the freshmen
had to go through remedial math because they didn't know
they weren't even at a middle school level in math.
And this is the problem. It's like, why would we
fund more of this? That's certainly you're not making the
argument that the teachers aren't teaching math because they're not
being paid enough. Right, that's certainly not the argument. So
what is the argument that I need to throw a
bunch more money and get worse outcomes year over year
over year. And particularly when you've seen the enrollment declines
as we have seen over the last few years too,
it seems like people are rejecting what you're what the
public schools are offering.
Speaker 2: Right, You're exactly right, And that's I mean, it's wild
how unprepared students are graduating from from high schools. And
it's hard because I feel like the root of so
many of our problems can't be solved by government. I mean,
the real problem is the decline in family structure in
North Carolina and in America, and the decline and you know,
and people wanting to prioritize family life and raising kids.
And I'm not sure exactly how we go about changing that,
but it's certainly not going to come by, you know,
increasing per pupil spending.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's it's sort of like the the Brookings
Institute report from gosh, i don't know, probably about twenty
years ago now, where they said, like, if you want
to stay out of poverty or get out of poverty,
have a job, any job, graduate high school, and don't
have kids before you graduate high school, and get married.
Like that's those are the three things and government doesn't
do any of that. Government can't do any of those things, right,
That's all societal norms. It's culture, it's family, it's civic engagement.
That's where you learn those things. And like that was
the Brookings Institute saying government's not doing it.
Speaker 2: Right, and why isn't that this success sequence? I mean,
that's what should be taught in public schools. There should
be a whole whole course just around that until people
until it's thinks in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah's. It seems like like we know these things,
these recipes for success, and yet we don't seem to
do a good job of conveying them to younger kids.
Like life is hard, you're gonna have struggles, you're gonna
have obstacles. You got to overcome them. It doesn't mean
you're oppressed, right, It doesn't mean somebody is keeping you
from your from your dream. It just means you need
to find a different way to get it. Yeah, Like
I don't I don't know why we don't do more
of that. But maybe, okay, maybe this is my bias,
but I suspect it has more to do with my
belief is the problem with the public school system is
the model. I just I don't believe the model works.
If it ever did, really, I don't think it works,
especially absent the family participation. So yeah, I don't know.
So it's to me. It's not an easy answer, but
vouchers were my that was my compromise position.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hugely important. You know, we're kind of descending into
grumpy old man tari. I know, I think we're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: I know, well, you know what, ba humbug, But you
know whatever, I'm off next week, so I'll get the
Christmas spirit next week. I guess there we go. Yeah, Andrew,
I was appreciated. Thank you for all of your contributions
to the show this year. I do appreciate that as well.
Much success in twenty twenty six to you as well, sir.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Likewise, all right, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this show, you know I try
to keep up with all sorts of current events, and
I know you do too, and you've probably heard me say,
get your news from multiple sources. Why. Well, because it's
how you detect media bias, which is why I've been
so impressed with ground News. It's an app, and it's
a website, and it combines news from around the world
in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information.
You can check it out at check dot ground, dot
news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast
description too. I started using ground News a few months
ago and more recently chose to work with them as
an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories
get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows
you which stories get ignored by the left and the right.
See for yourself check dot ground, dot news slash pete.
Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off
any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited
access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps
my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they
make the media landscape more trans parent. So in his
piece Andrew Dunn wrote over at The Charlotte Observer, he
quoted state Representative Mike Sheetzelt, who called the public school
funding and lack of confidence in the public schools a
chicken and egg problem, right, what came first? The chicken
or the egg kind of thing. Parents don't trust that
school leaders will respect basic boundaries or tell the truth
until they are forced to do so. Lawmakers don't trust
that districts will use new resources wisely or stay within
the lines they have been given, and teachers don't trust
that the legislature has their backs. And each group uses
the other's worst behavior to justify its own, And the
more that cycle spins, the more families head for the exits.
Public schools are losing students, they're losing teachers and losing
the benefit of the doubt. If that continues, he said,
the big debates over teacher pay, school choice, what belongs
in a second grade classroom, all of that will be
beside the point. There won't be much of a common
system left to argue over and again. My bias here
is that I don't think the government school model works.
It may have, and you know, I'm a product of
public schools, but I'm a gen xer, and I think
public schools are different now. But I think people have
an idea of what they think public schools, you know,
are teaching, and what's going on in the schools now,
and they base that on what it was like for
them when they were in school. But I can tell
you like I did not. I mean I did well
with grades. I was always I did very well in
the testing. I did very well, you know, doing my
assignments and all of that. But I was bored, absolutely bored,
and then I became disruptive. This may be a surprise
to some people to learn that I would. I would
make jokes and stuff in the classroom. I frequently had
you know, straight a's, But then I would have is
disruptive in class speaks at inappropriate times. The writing was
on the wall. It's a factory model. The government school
system is a factory model based off the Prussian model.
And it's fine if you're cranking out factory workers. I
guess that need to know just enough English words so
they can, you know, not sever their limbs in the machinery.
But as the founder of the system said, we are
not intending to create men of letters. That's not the point.
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jump over to the phones and chat with Zario. Welcome
to the show, Zaria. Yes, hello, Yes, you are live
on the air.
Speaker 4: Gotcha. So I just wanted to provide a little bit
of insight because I am a school teacher, and I
know a lot of times it's easy for people to
assume things, but a lot of times they aren't actually
in the school system, so they're seeking off of opinions
and not necessarily facts. When it comes to teacher pay,
I think that each year more things are required for teachers,
more training. I think that teachers would just like to
be able to be paid for the work that they
do at home, or be paid for the training that
is mandatory out side of hours that they wouldn't get
paid for. I also think that when people talk about
the school system and the children aren't prepared for college
and different things like that, they are failing to realize
that class numbers continue to grow. I know personally at
my school one of the teachers has over forty children
in her classroom.
Speaker 1: What grade level is that?
Speaker 4: This is high school and a lot more people are
leaving education and fewer people are, you know, actually pursuing
education as a career. Therefore, a lot of time in
classrooms there aren't teachers. There are long term subs there,
and these are people who may not even have a
college degree responsible for teaching your child a curriculum. And so,
for one, funding has always been an issue. Each year,
I know that they have cut more and more funding
from our programs and we have less and less funding
to work with. I mean, it even comes down to behavior, right,
Like the larger the class sizes are, the harder it
is to maintain a safe classroom environment. And really a
lot of school systems should have alternative schools to help
with those children who are high behavioral needs, but there's
not funding for it. So a lot of the time
that should be used towards teaching and instruction is really
being used as redirecting for behavior incidents.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, Zaria, everything that you have said, I have
heard from teachers for twenty five years. Okay, I've covered schools,
covered the Charla Mecklberg school system for twenty years. All
of those things that you've said are things that teachers
have said. And my family members who are teachers, they
all say the same things as well. To me, that
is further evidence everything you've just laid out is further
evidence that the model doesn't work. The model is, in
my view, the problem is the model. It is a
massive government bureaucracy, the explosion of administrative positions rather than
teacher positions. That's that's part of the reason why you're
seeing all of the cram downs of you know, paperwork
and trainings and all of this stuff. I've said for
years that truly great teachers, I would want them to
make six figures, but I'm not. But I'm not going
to pay the bad teachers the same amount of money.
So until the education establishment is able to figure out
some way to identify good teachers from the bad ones
and then to pay the good ones more money, like
I'm not going to be I'm not going to be
pressured into funding terrible teachers because everybody knows you and
you do too. You know who are the good teachers
in your school and who aren't the good teachers? Right,
the kids know, the parents know. Everybody has gone to
school and had good teachers and bad ones. So I
would like to pay the good ones a lot more money,
but I don't want to have to pay the bad
ones the same amount. I find that to be kind
of demoralizing for the good ones. Right, So what I've
always been met with whenever I say this, though, is
that there's no way that the schools are able to differentiate.
There's no way that they could do that, which I
don't believe. Yeah, I don't believe that's the goods.
Speaker 4: So each each year we well for one, each teacher
has to give observed minimum three times of the years,
and with each observation is a whole list of things
that are being looked for for the observation. There have
been teachers who have been put on like plans, basically
saying like, your teaching is not up to par. These
are the things that need to be fixed by the
end of the year or you will be asked to leave.
So there's definitely ways to determine good teachers from bad teachers.
You know, there are teachers who get fired or asked
to not come back or different things like that. But
I mean, really, at any job, right, there's always going
to be really great workers, and there are also going
to be people who don't work as hard or you know,
find loopholes. But I think we have to say that, like,
as a country we value education, because right now, the
way that the school system is, it's showing kids that
they don't like. It's showing that the country doesn't value education.
Speaker 1: So all right, I'm going to so I'm going to
disagree with you on that, and I'm going to cite
budgets as okay, because if you look at the budget,
what we spend our money on. The number one expenditure
at the state level is education. The number one budget,
the largest budget locally is the school district budget. I
think it's two point two billion at this point, right
and we have fewer kids now than we have had.
I mean we're down to like twenty ten numbers. Like
the school the student population is lower than it's been
in fifteen years. So we're spending billions of dollars on education.
So I would submit that that is proof that as
a society, we're plowing a ton of money into education.
The problem is the results aren't there. The results get
worse and worse. So what's what's the problem.
Speaker 4: Oh, I think my rebuttal for that is, first, you know,
we can say that we spend this much on education,
but we also have to look at Okay, within that budget,
where is the money going. So I think that that's
something that needs to be looked into.
Speaker 1: I agree, that's that was my comment about it. The
administrative bloat, all of the administrative positions that are getting funded.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, it's not going towards you know, teaching, it's not
going towards teacher pay. I'll say, sometimes things get spent on, Oh,
it's teacher appreciation week. Let's let's have a catered meal
for the teachers, when really you can ask any teacher,
we rather just have more money per month because every
teacher I know works multiple jobs and I don't think
that that's fair. I personally work three. As far as
what is the issue and why we aren't seeing results,
I have to say something, and I don't know if
people are gonna like it, but I'm here to be honest.
A lot of it is accountability from the parents. Parents
lots of times expect us to not only teach their
children content, but to raise their kids as well, and
lots of times our time is spent teaching children how to.
Speaker 3: Behave, how to behave yes, and how to get along
well with others instead of actually teaching them the content
and and lots of times.
Speaker 4: Anytime that I do hold my kids accountable, I do
have a lot of pushback from parents. For instance, I
don't accept late work in my classroom. The reason for
that being is that the work that I give my kids,
I give them two weeks to complete it, and I
give them class time to do it. Argument is this,
you know, you have to have time management, and I
teach them time management skills. But I also say, hey,
if if Miss Franklin is laid on her bills, that's
a penalty.
Speaker 1: Right, you know what I mean? Life is deadline. Yeah,
life is full of deadlines that you have to meet.
Speaker 4: Deadlines, absolutely, and I am trying to prepare them for
the real world in college. Therefore, you know, in college,
if you miss the deadline, you miss the deadline. But
I have had a lot of pushback from parents on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure saying that I.
Speaker 4: Need to give their child more time. It's not fair.
They weren't at school the day it was due, and
I'm just thinking, well, this assignment's been to do for
two weeks and they could have submitted it at home,
you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So.
Speaker 4: That's one thing. Another thing is pushed back with IPS.
I don't know if you're familiar with what.
Speaker 1: IEPs are, visual plans.
Speaker 4: Uh and individual education plans. IEPs can be based off
of behavior. It can say, you know, this child struggles
with reading, they need to have extra time on this assignment,
or you know, it's a specific plan for a child
to be successful in school. The whole purpose of this
is to act as as support but not a crutch.
You have parents who want to continue to keep their
children on their IEP plan until they graduate. But I
say this, I'm like, you know, I know your child
struggles with behavior, but guess what when they're eighteen and
they get pulled over by the police, there's no red
folder that tells the police, Hey, this child struggles with this, this,
and this, you know what I mean. Or when you
go to a job, it's not oh, you get extra
time to complete this yeah, because.
Speaker 1: You know yeah, Zaria, Yeah, I appreciate the call. I've
got to leave it there. Thank you for the insight,
of course, all right, take care. Yeah. I think one
last point is something Thatsarria said there is that a
lot of parents do turn their kids over to be
raised by the government and its education officials. But that
was also part of the sales pitch that was made
to parents thirty years ago. Right, that's when schools started
doing more and more and more things wrap around services.
They started doing all of this stuff, so parents received
that message that turn your kid over to us will
basically raise them with the character, education and all of
that stuff.
Speaker 3: You know.
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jump over here and get Mitch on the program. Hello, Mitch, Hey, Hey,
what's say?
Speaker 5: I'll just sit on one of the things. My wife's
been teaching for forty years, so I've heard a lot
about teaching over thirty. Some of you a marriage. I
understand that it's very difficult to create any type of
metrics to judge teachers. They don't they're not creating widgets.
My wife will tell you that she's had classes that
make it very easy on her and make her look good,
and she's had classes that make it next time possible
for her to look good. I believe that there's no
way a bureaucrat sitting in Raleigh can can deal with
that and pay the good teachers and not pay the
bad ones. And I'll tell you it frustrates me to
no end that my wife, who works very, very very
hard at her job, makes the same thing as people
who just do enough.
Speaker 6: Not to get fired.
Speaker 5: And that is true I believe the principles need I
have a lot of autonomy, and who gets paid in
their schools. They're the only ones.
Speaker 6: Who can really make that type of a judgment. And
I think that's they're never going to work out any
process like that until they give that type of responsibility
to Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, Mitch, that's an idea that I kicked around a
decade ago. And yet when I would talk about this idea,
like giving principles, hiring, firing, wage setting, all of that,
giving them those responsibilities, letting them actually run their schools,
you know who you know who objected? You know who
opposed it? Teachers? They didn't. They because they don't, because
because they all have had they've all had a principle
that they did not get along with and they don't
want to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and they don't.
Speaker 1: And that was what I said. Yeah, that's what I
said too, But it just the opposition. It all came
from the teachers. Yeah, Mitch, I appreciate the call, sir. Yeah,
I mean there are there are creative ideas that exist
if you're trying to save this government run system, and
I'm open to you testing them out, you know, seeing
school districts do so but but we just get more
of the same. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
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